We did our first Barcelona tango milonga. All milongas have a name, this one is "Susurro", "whisper". It goes with the low key nature of the place, starting with the nondescript, unmarked entrance. We knew the address, then had to observe tango-looking people going in. You knock on the pink door, it gets unlatched & you're let in.
Here's the DJ.
Of all the wonderful coincidences to occur, our yoga teacher is also in tango and she was at the milonga. Here's Claudia & Susanne.
It turns out her interest in tango is genetic. She is Argentinian born but left forty years ago.
In the USA weekend milongas tend to run from 8:30 or 9:00pm to 12 midnight or 1am. In keeping with the later Spanish hours, their milongas start at 10:00 or 10:30pm and end around 2:00am. We arrived at 10:45pm; this is the uncrowded dance floor at 11. It really starts jumping around midnight...the floor gets very busy. And slowly starts clearing out after 1am.
Sorry for the blur...my little Nikon point-and-shoot knows only to use a slower shutter speed in low light. For me, carrying around a big DSLR hunk of glass & metal is too much work. Did that in the '70's with an Asahi Pentax film machine & got jillions of pics stored somewhere to show for it.
More evidence the Europeans don't have the gender hangups. The milonga restroom is one door & inside that door is a single washbasin and two booths, side by side. One booth has the picture of a man, the other a lady. I dutifully stood in front of the man-pic booth & out came a lady. Do what works easiest. I love it! (Another upside...no transgender issues.)
We left at 1:45am, Claudia showed us to the Metro stop; our home stop is on the same line. Her only means of transport is her bike. That's not unusual; the milonga had a bike storage room.
The Metro was quite busy for that time of night, errr...morning. There was a really raucous group of men in our car singing very loudly and jumping up & down. As the Metro stops slid by, they got louder and more animated. We were very grateful when our stop appeared. As we got off, I noticed several other riders jumped ship & moved to another car. It all seemed harmless, but these things can get ugly.
As we walked from the Metro stop to our neighborhood, it was past 2am, but the restaurants & bars still had customers; some were crowded. Saturday night in Barcel-town.
We walked into the apt. at 2:30am, gawd!!!
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Slept in Sunday morning, then did what we always do every Sunday no matter where we are...put together our special b'fast, today...eggs over easy, potatoes & ham, washed down with our usual extra-strong coffee.
Sunday afternoon is the maid's time to thoroughly clean the apartment. So we also did a final laundry. (We have a washer/dryer combo in the apartment...painfully, painfully slow. Three hours for a full wash/dry cycle & the clothes still aren't fully dry.)
That pretty much blew the day, it was raining anyway.
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I can't remember (and am too lazy to check) if I mentioned previously that Paul & Donna, Susanne's step father & bride are here on their honeymoon; purely by coincidence...time in Madrid, here now, then home to South Carolina on Tuesday.
Sunday night we met them at a Ramblas Metro stop and on the way to dinner, stopped at a candy shop. Talk about kids in a candy store!
And passed by a church, much smaller than the basilica/cathedral we saw previously but quite beautiful nevertheless. With the nuns at prayer, I felt we were kind of intruding so we didn't stay long.
For dinner, we took them to the great hake/tough veal place. We all ordered the hake. Super dinner for us, no boring repeat food pics for you.
But here's a shot of us at dessert. Susanne had her creme brulee, of course. The rest of us had a very chocolatey thingy with ice cream.
Starting last Saturday, the weather slid towards rain...gentle, light & intermittent with some sun. Now it's cloudy all the time with a still gentle rain off & on, hopefully clearing by tomorrow.
I'm sending this one off, shorter than usual.
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